After reading Bolter’s “Writing the Mind” and Chang’s “Culture: A Web of Self and Others,” I feel as though writers speak for not only themselves but also for the people that relate to them. My personal identity has shaped my writing in a unique way because I find that I’m normally an odd, awkward, funny, “whatever you want to call it” type of guy and it translates into the style of my writing and the topics I write about. As most writers do, I like to write about the topics that interest me. This basically concludes that my writing will mention lots of food, animals, travel and personal experiences. Those things are what formulate my own personal writing culture. Writing is an “extension and a reflection” of the mind which effects people personally because when a reader is reading, they are in their mind, not thinking about others opinions, just focusing on the text. My writing has a balance of self and culture in the sense that I love to express my feelings but I am also aware of who I am directing my messages to and as to who I may be impacting. I try to make my writing relatable to culture because I want what I say to have an impact on people and for them to have a reaction to it.

An example of how my writing is both reflective of the cultural influences, but also extends my individual self of those cultures is when I wrote my story about how I spilt my Jamba Juice. This is an example of me reflecting on my past experiences and how they made me feel. This piece also relates heavily on the culture of students and people in general who can relate to the story. It shows how I was culturally impacted by this event because when speaking to my peers, they all related in some way to the story which made me feel as though there was a large enough group of people that could relate to my experience. I also felt as though people could relate to my anger throughout the story because anger is something that everyone has to go through in their everyday lives.

Dear Mr. Pace

My name is Dasha Levin, and I am a freshman at Chapman University. I am writing to you today about an event that occurred a week ago, which involved your product: Jamba Juice. I have been a Jamba Juice enthusiast for my entire life. I have memories of going to Jamba with my mom and brother after school for as long as I can remember. Although my tastes have changed, as I used to be more of a Strawberry Whirl kind of kid, and have now grown into a Matcha Green Tea Blast young adult, my loyalty to your smoothies has not wavered. 

Imagine my happiness when I discovered that there was a Jamba Juice located on my college campus! Never before had I had the ability to walk from class and get my daily dose of happiness in a cup.

On Wednesday, February 26, 2020, I had a particularly stressful morning. My 8 A.M. class did not go well, and I left it feeling tired, distraught, and hungry. I knew that my beloved Jamba would be the perfect pick-me-up for this cloudy winter day, so off I went to order a large Matcha Green Tea Blast. I knew that 28 liquid ounces of pure gold would perfectly hit the spot. Not wanting to waste a single drop of deliciousness on my walk back, I resisted the urge to take a sip as I made my way back to my dorm. It was then that the tragedy occurred. One minute I was walking along, happily anticipating my beverage, and the next thing I knew, like a slow-motion scene in a movie, the drink was slipping through my hand, flying through the air, and exploding all over the sidewalk in front of me. My left hand contained my textbook from class, so there was no saving my smoothie from its fate as it covered the sidewalk, my pants, hoodie, and face in green liquid.

For a moment I stood, trying to process what had happened. As I blinked green, sticky mess from my eyes, I was able to focus on a girl standing ten feet away from me. Before I could even collect myself or allow the disappointment to sink in, she called out to me, and said, “everything is going to be okay.” She kept walking, continuing on her day, and I watched her leave. Once I collected myself and kept walking to my dorm, her words echoed in my head, and made me angrier and angrier. To her, it was simply a funny and unfortunate story: boy walks past her, boy drops drink, boy is covered in drink. To me, this smoothie was a symbol of turning a frustrating morning into a happy one, as the item I purchased to bring me joy became a literal disaster that had to be cleaned up. For the rest of the day, as I passed by the spot where the incident occurred, I felt ashamed, and was reminded all over again how my morning joy turned into embarrassment.

Unlike the pain of a papercut, the pain of spilling my matcha green tea blast has lasted for weeks. It rattled me to the point where I haven’t been able to return to my favorite smoothie place. I was so incensed by this tragedy that I was spurred to write a letter to the CEO of Jamba Juice as a result. I know I am not the only one to have this issue so I feel the need to speak out and stand up for those who feel like they don’t have a voice. 

Your cups have been part of my story for longer than the incident last week. Back in 2012, when I was 12, a classmate of mine named Mia Hansen started a petition on change.org to ask you to get rid of your styrofoam cups. She got over 133,000 signatures, and your company graciously spoke with her, and made a huge effort to get rid of the styrofoam by the end of 2013. You did this, and we are so happy that you did. However, the plastic replacement is an improvement for the environment, but a downgrade to the population. The condensation on the plastic makes the cup extra slippery, causing massive slips to happen, just like the one I experienced last week. If experiences like this one keep occuring, your loyal customers will slowly deplete which will cause problems for the company in the future.

I implore you to rethink your cup design. Plastic is not biodegradable, and is very slippery to hold. At a minimum, I wish your stores would carry the paper cup sleeves like Starbucks often have. Although your beverages are not hot, the addition of these recyclable sleeves would be beneficial to all of your customers. The sleeves will block the condensation from getting onto customers’ hands, and as a result, the cups would be less likely to slip out of their hands. Additionally, I wish you would consider biodegradable cups. They are more expensive, but better for the environment, and many have ridges along the bottom which also will help them be less slippery for the consumer. This experience has changed many more aspects of my life than one would expect such as if I should carry my food back to my room or should I stay and eat it there, is it worth ordering a my favorite drink which ends up slippery or should I completely avoid the situation by going to the Qdoba right next door. 

Fortunately the spilling is a problem that can be solved if we stand for our cause and our right to enjoy the drinks that we all know and love. Even though it was a rough week, the experience helped me shine light on the fact that not all days go as you plan and you must look past the occurrence and keep moving forward. I was able to make lemonade-or, Matcha Green Tea-of a very lemony situation, as reflecting on this incident has helped me explore what changes could happen to prevent this from ever happening again to not only me, but college students and smoothie lovers around the world.

From,

Your Most Loyal Customer

When starting to think of how I would respond to the Alabama Clergymen if something like this had been going on for months in a form of group protest. The reason why I would want a group protest to be with me is because there’s security in numbers. I also feel like a protest is more impactful due to the amount of people showing up for the same cause. If it were me alone trying to stop the conflict, I would be scared for my safety knowing what radicals could do to my well being. I wouldn’t send out a letter against the Alabama Clergymen because I feel as though that would put a target on my back so I would have to work behind the scenes. In my work to stop the unjust actions that keep happening in the city, I would organize large group gathering to show our unhappiness with how the system is handling the situations. I feel like I would also speak out on social media about the issue because my personal page provides me with a safe space to share my concerns about them without having to write a letter directly to the Alabama Clergymen. My response to an issue which I think is unjust is to help out by volunteering, going to events and by spreading awareness. My main goal is to get more people involved and to spread awareness to the problem because if there’s enough people supporting a cause, real change happens and when the publics mindset starts to support the cause. If the public causes governmental concern then that should be enough to force change to the system and ultimately solve the issue. The best ending of the issue would having it be a peaceful end to the conflict, unfortunately most of the time it ends in violence which is not something I would like to be a part of.

I’d like to look at my upbringing through a psychological lens because I believe that someone’s personal experiences and how they handled them tells a lot about a person. When looking at my upbringing, the paths that I have taken have been pretty consistent with my personality rather than previous personal experiences.

After reading, Gunner and Sweet “The Rhetorical Uses of Critical Frames”, I feel like he spends a lot of time thinking about patterns based off of cultural values. In my own personal experiences with having to deal with decisions based off of cultural value, the one that has stood out to me the most in my years is had been my decision to not get a tattoo. The reason for this is because I am Jewish and my parents have always disapproved of the idea. Even though I have not gotten any tattoos, my brother as gotten many and will continue to get more. This is the only instance where I find culture to be stopping me from doing something and even in this case, I’m still planning on getting tattoos, it’s just a matter when I am mentally prepared for it.

The more I look into any specific paths that my life has taken to this point, I keep getting the same conclusions. I pursue my passions no matter where they take me and I’m always open for an adventure so I end up in all different kinds of places. A prime example of this is my passion for elephants. I flew to Thailand to became an elephant trainer after my grandmother introduced them to me at a very young age. Wherever she or I would travel to a new destination, we would get a little elephant figure from that place to add to her collection. I went to Thailand with a group of around 40 strangers which I met at the airport for this great journey to become elephant trainers all because of the obsession for elephants which stemmed from my grandmother.

My point of view changed after having read the Vonnegut and Wallace because they both discussed the principles of writing even though I agree more with Vonnegut. I agree more with his foundations and principles because they are more about how it should be structured than a way to write. This allows for the writer to feel free in their writing and helps maximize their creativity while writing. Vonnegut focuses on expanding on your topic of interest and structuring it the most presentable way. My favorite part about his article was how he urges the writers to be themselves and to get the point that they are trying to get across.

In Wallace’s article, his ideas were scattered all over the place and he tend to ramble his thoughts. He deeply goes into thinking about infants which is not something I’m interested in reading nor do I understand his train of thought. Although I’m suspicious that Wallace was under the influence while writing his article, I do admire his ability to put his thoughts down and create an article with strong opinions and crazy rants. I may not be a fan of Wallace’s writing but it is something that was an interesting read and got my attention.

In my own personal writing of the Barn Exercise I tried to use the space that I was given almost like a painting. I tried to paint the picture of the barn, tried as best as I could to make the reader feel as if they could themselves be in the barn. I added a humorous end to the thrilling story because one of the most important things to focus on when writing is if people are going to like to read it and if they can read your writing multiple times. Another thing that I found important was being able to make your writing readable so the reader isn’t left lost once they are finished.

I’ve walked in this way many times before, but this time something was different. It was a gloomy day outside but there was something else which made the day feel unlike the rest. I’ve often come to the barn to grab supplies for work but today was strange. I’m not sure if it was the chemicals in the air or how the chair was facing the wall. But when I felt the drop of liquid fall on my shoulder, I realized the barn was freshly painted.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

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